Young women, minors increasingly partaking in terrorist operations: Europol

 

BRUSSELS: Younger women and children are now more often involved in the already increasing number of terrorist activities in Europe, the continent's security agency revealed in its latest report.

The UK, for instance, is one of the countries that has seen a bump up in the number of women, families, and minors getting engaged in extremist plots, despite the fact that they remain a small proportion of the overall travellers.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report comes just before the EU summit set to be held in Luxembourg next week, wherein various leaders will sit to discuss measures to 'un-radicalise' the region.

According to the report, this particular demographic "are playing increasingly operational roles in committing terrorist activities independently in the EU".

The publication further states that the average age at travelling time of those participating in such events has reduced significantly; nearly half of the travellers aged 18 and below have departed since the declaration of Daesh's 'caliphate’ back in July 2014.

Poland said that those of its citizens who travelled were all under 22 years of age. While overall figures for the EU are not available, of much more concern is the fact that by the last year-end, the Netherlands registered a total of over 40 children (age 0-12 years) who travelled to Iraq or Syria with their parents.

Austria, on the other hand, noted that women and minors either go or want to go to the conflict zones and that some women married foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) in Syria under the Islamic law, partly through the help of social media.

Denmark stipulated that only a few people left the country in 2016. Of these, the vast majority were young women. It is noteworthy that women, in general, account for nearly an eighth of the total outbound travellers.

A higher number of women play an active, independent role within the militant circles in Denmark, the latest report noted, adding that this may consequently have an increasingly radicalising effect on their associates and families.

Belgium, however, reported that the returning women and children are a bigger concern due to female activists' apparent involvement in the preparation of the attacks. Some may also have received military training during their tours abroad. In addition, Daesh propaganda has repeatedly called for the training and indoctrination of minors.

On the flipside, Spain experienced a decline in the number of women detained in 2016 and that only one of them was willing to travel to the conflict zone.

The average age of arrestees in Spain was 31, which reflects a 2-year increase from the previous reporting period. A minor was taken into care due to his parents’ arrest after they attempted to travel to the conflict zone.

2016 in Europe

At least 86 lives were taken when a truck rammed through the crowds during July festivities in Nice, while the Brussels bombings in 2016 left 32 dead

As per the report, one of every four (25 percent) taken into custody last year were women, as opposed to almost 18 percent in 2015. More recently, 22-year-old Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi allegedly got instructions on how to construct an explosive device.

"Some 142 terrorist plots had also been foiled in eight EU states last year. Over 70 were stopped in the UK alone, followed by 23 in France, 17 in Italy, and 10 in Spain, among others," EUobserver, an independent online newspaper, stated citing Europol's report.

In 2016, there were 13 reported attacks in total, with five in France and four in Belgium and Germany each, BBC reported, adding that 135 people died in these.

Inclusive of the 429 suspected extremists detained in France, there were 718 arrests in total.

Interestingly, more than 25% of these were women.